Jets at Sea: Naval Aviation in transition 1945 - 55 by Leo Marriott

Author:Leo Marriott [Marriott, Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783460694
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2009-03-09T07:00:00+00:00

5

ADAPTING THE CARRIERS - 1950 TO 1955

Although by 1950 the US Navy was clearly the world’s most powerful navy with a carrier fleet to match, the Royal Navy was making up for its smaller size by pioneering a series of vital inventions that were to prove the key to operating the new generation of high-performance jets then under development. However, being a pioneer in any field is never easy and many ideas were tried and tested before a concept could be brought to the stage where it could be safely applied to everyday carrier operations. Inevitably, some of these ideas led to a blind alley, but not before a considerable amount of time and effort had been expended, and in this category is firmly placed the concept of the flexible deck.

This had its origins as far back as 1944/5 when the first jet fighters were entering service. It was immediately apparent that they lacked the range of their piston engine contemporaries due to the high fuel consumption of jet engines. One idea put forward was that if the undercarriage could be dispensed with then the saving in weight and space could be utilised to substantially increase fuel tankage. The idea was not quite as bizarre as it might appear as several advanced German aircraft such as the Me.163 rocket-powered interceptor and early versions of the Arado Ar.234 jet bomber had used this method of operation. The main drawback was obviously the necessity to lift the aircraft onto some form of cradle after landing before it could be moved. For this reason the RAF quickly abandoned the idea but the Royal Navy was more interested as it saw it as one way of redressing the weight penalty inherent in naval aircraft necessitated by the need for extra equipment and strengthening for deck operations. Also, as naval aircraft were routinely launched from catapults, this method could easily be applied to undercarriage-less aircraft mounted on a suitable trolley. Major Green, one of the engineers working at RAE Farnborough, put forward a scheme whereby a landing aircraft could engage an arrester wire and be brought to rest on a large rubber mat suspended above a carrier’s flight deck. After a successful landing, the aircraft would be winched to the forward end of the mat where it would be pulled onto a specially designed trolley. It could theneasily be moved around the deck and the same trolley could be attached to a catapult for take-off. It was estimated that a landing rate of one aircraft every thirty seconds could be achieved.

Further development now became the responsibility of the Naval Aircraft Department at Farnborough who refined the design to include a series of inflated canvas tubes to provide an air bed under the rubber mat in order to absorb and cushion the impact of the landing aircraft. By 1946 an experimental bed had been set up at Farnborough and a series of experiments was carried out in which surplus Hotspur glider fuselages loaded with various amounts of ballast were dropped onto the bed.

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